I'm an old player who hasn't played in years, but I just had something happen to me today that made me seek out other Marathon players and ask if they have had anything similar happen to them. I first played Marathon at a friend's house in the late '90s, and eventually got the "Mac Action Stack" that contained the entire trilogy for Christmas in 1999.

Anyways, onto the story.

I just had a guy dressed in a bright green shirt and bright green sweatpants approach me saying "Thank god it's you!" and experienced a moment of fear and panic.Luckily I was unarmed and nothing much came of it, he was just waiting for me to help him fix something (I'm a computer technician). He also had NO idea why I momentarily looked scared by his greeting, having never heard of Marathon when I mentioned it.

Has anything like this happened to anyone else?

The funny thing is, I haven't played Marathon I since my pre-G3 PowerMac 6500/300 died in 2009, and I'm almost certain I hadn't played the original game instead of a TC since at least 2008, probably longer. Yet I instantly connected the phrase with a guy in green approaching me and felt panic in real-life. Weird, huh?

I’ve never been that affected. I have heard “They’re everywhere!” but my only reaction was a chuckle. I have heard various machine and mechanical noises from the games, but am usually unable to figure out what part of the environment is causing it. Although when I see politicians on TV I usually think of F’lickta for some reason.

I never have either, but I've never had both the words AND a florescent green outfit at the same time before either. I've heard somebody say "Thank god it's you!" before and it made me turn to look, and I've (rarely) seen people wearing florescent green before, but this is the first time somebody wearing a florescent green shirt & pants started approaching me while saying "Thank god it's you!".

Also, it was only a second of fear, although apparently it was enough to show a look of terror on my face for an instant, because he asked if something was wrong. When I told him to never use those words while wearing an outfit that color, he was completely confused as to why and when I said "Because it will make anybody who has played Marathon think you are a suicide bomber" he asked me "What's Marathon? I thought that was a race, not a game".

There's a corridor intersection at work where I kept expecting a cyborg to roll around the corner. Took me ages to figure out why: there's an a/c fan in the ceiling above me, a famliar-looking trash can at the corner and an out-of-sync motor that sounds like the jjaro siren.